Gossamer Wings and Lifejackets
by Queen Nightingale
Summary: Without Lily Evans there was no James Potter. And without James Potter there was no Lily Evans. JPLE, One-Shot.


**Gossamer Wings and Lifejackets**

Author: **Queen Nightingale**

Rating: **M **(For Language)

Pairing: **JPLE**

**(~**~**~**~**~**~)**

On New Year's Eve

I found an angel in the bathtub

smoking cigarettes.

The fallen ash smudged the porcelain

and the smoke choked his wings.

He put his holy fingers on my arm

and I saw that they were painted nicotine yellow.

He asked if I knew how to turn on the water,

I told him I didn't,

but that I knew how to drink champagne,

and then offered him some –

to go with his cigarettes.

- Katherine Leyton, _Corrupted Angel_

* * *

She always thought he was beautiful. It was just difficult to come out, difficult to spit out the words, difficult to tell him the truth, not the lies, the horrible horrible lies that she'd been substituting instead of the inexplicable, the unexplained. Lily Evans thinking James Potter was fine?! Madness, love.

She was fascinated with him, in all honesty. Wherever he went, wherever he stepped, there was light. Not pure, chaste light, no, no, James Potter was nothing like that. But it was a bold, striking red or gold, just like his house – courage and naughtiness and laughter all bundled up into this one strange, tall boy.

He always had this particular smile on his face whenever he saw her, making her insides squeamish.

She hated that feeling, so she muttered curses under her breath and swore at him, trying to make him stop smiling. So that she wouldn't feel like her head was plunked in water and that she was upside-down, topsy-turvy.

(No-one had ever made her feel that way.)

* * *

He was gorgeous because he was real, but yet oddly perfect. It was as if he had just stepped off of some Jane Austen novel and plunked himself down, grinning mischievously up at her.

And he would NEVER give up.

Not when she flung twelve long-stemmed lilies in his face during the Halloween feast. Not when she glared at him from across the room in Herbology. Not when she screamed obscenities at him across the Gryffindor common room. Not when her face turned red and her eyes turned ruby and her cheeks turned cherry. Even then she was this beautiful shade of scarlet that he knew no-one else would enjoy half as much as him.

No, the actual problem was that James Potter never lost. And Lily Evans was the only girl in the grade that refused to be just another conquest.

And thus, their parlay began.

And it was a riotous fight – a tango, a salsa, a madman's jig – across emotions and boundaries that shouldn't have been crossed to begin with.

When she screamed he hollered, when she was disappointed he bought presents, when she cried he punched other boys. And then she cried some more in frustration, and so he punched some more boys.

It was something that fit together magnificently, like a puzzle piece.

Without Lily Evans there was no James Potter. And without James Potter there was no Lily Evans.

* * *

But she had fragile gossamer wings, while his were crafted of the finest gold, burnished but unfortunately not too strong. For they were molten gold, liquid gold, a fine sort of fluid that ran from one shoulder to another, decorated in crushed red velvet.

Every time they argued hers became a bit less transparent, while his ripped, a tiny bit. One piece of velvet off his shoulder, a droplet of gold dripping down his arm.

No matter how pretty gold is, it will never be as strong as it looks, and slowly she managed to rip off his wings with her sharp tongue and cruel words, feeding off of his humiliation and crafting her own way to fly.

(Because it wasn't fair that only he could soar.)

She tore off his wings, slowly picked and picked and picked at the beautiful red crushed velvet feathers and the gold border until nothing was left but a faint sheen of yellow.

He tried to race her past the sun but fell when his wings wouldn't hold up anymore, when his opponent declined him time after time after time.

And for a period, a moment, a brief lapse in history, he gave up.

And her gossamer wings weren't gossamer anymore but a chalky white, and his wings didn't reek of lust and love and courage, but bled pain and agony onto the floor.

He turned stony towards her and couldn't take anymore of her rejections. She turned onto herself when he wouldn't get riled up, wouldn't accept her invitation to foxtrot or rumba.

She wasn't Lily Evans anymore, and he wasn't James Potter.

They were fragments of their own imagination.

* * *

The way their actual romance started wasn't exquisite, wasn't full of beautiful boisterous boys and gorgeous sappy girls, but started on a puff of cigarette smoke and a swear word. She was supposed to be patrolling the classrooms when she spotted him. He was a bit past the groundkeeper's hut, by the edge of the lake, and nearly entering the Forbidden Forest. Deciding for once in her life to break a rule, she skives off of her duties (because honestly, what Ravenclaw would be out at this time anyways?) and chases after him, abandoning her post at the window of the Ravenclaw Tower.

He stands there, cold and harsh, illuminated by the light of the stars that for some reason seem metallic as she walks towards him through Hogwarts' grounds. She creeps up behind him, and spots the smoking ember of a cigarette gleaming from his shaking hand, and a half-empty bottle of Ogden's Finest in the other.

"Classy, Potter," she sneers, approaching him from behind, making him turn and glare at her, "Getting drunk by yourself on a school night. I should take away points."

He remains silent, but his gritted teeth give away his irritation.

Uninvited, she plops down on a pile of logs beside where he was standing, her skirt nearly flying up past her knees. Raising the lit cigarette to his lips, he ignores her and inhales deeply; a couple seconds later the smoke pours out of his nostrils.

She rolls her eyes at his evident inability to make small talk and leans back against the logs, staring up at the night sky. She extends a pale arm, and points at three stars.

"There's Orion," she says wistfully, her tone changing as she dreamily stares up at the sky, "That's his belt. He's the hunter."

He turns to watch her as she continues to talk, once in a while taking a drag on his cigarette.

"Whenever I'm back at home, with Petunia and Mum and Dad, you can always see Orion's belt through my window. When I was a little girl I used to run up to the shades and peep through them at nine o'clock, or maybe ten – it seemed late back then – and drink in the night air and the stars. They're the only constellation that I recognize."

"The belt holding up the pants of a hunter. Now why does that seem so oddly suitable? Even when you were young you must have been a whore."

She freezes at his deep voice, coming out harsh and jagged and angry, and turns to face James, who's clenching onto his bottle of alcohol hard enough to make his knuckles white.

"What the fuck is your problem!" she retorts, sitting upright and glaring at him, hurt flashing through her eyes, a red blush spreading up her face, "How dare you! I come out here to see if you're alright, and that's what I get?"

"Yehh," James suddenly yells back, throwing his beer bottle with a smash against the logs where she was sitting, causing her to jump as the glass shards fly everywhere, "You really came out here to help me." He imitates her, "Classy James. Getting drunk on a school night."

"I could have taken off points!" Lily defends herself, starting to stand up, a scowl firmly plastered on her face.

"What the hell do you want, Evans," he replies, moving a shaky hand through his messy black hair.

She pauses for a second, momentarily unsure and uneasy.

"I don't know."

"WHY THE FUCK DID YOU COME OUT HERE?!" he turns and screams at her, causing her to recoil, "HAVEN'T YOU RUINED ME ENOUGH?!"

"Ruined you?!" she shouts back, her body shaking with a touch of fear, "How have I ruined you?"

He drops his cigarette and angrily smashes it into the ground with the toe of his dress shoes, and then starts to walk away from her, his Hogwarts' robes billowing behind him. Furiously, she jumps to her feet, ignoring the fact that her skirt is hiked up five inches too high, and chases after him.

"What the fuck is your problem, Potter?"

"JAMES," he turns to her and roars, causing her to flinch back. He suddenly is right up in her face and she realizes that she barely reaches his shoulder, "JAMES, Lily. That's my name, everyone calls me it."

Her tongue twists in response to his words, and she can't manage to spit a sentence out.

"I like you Lily, a LOT, too bloody much in my opinion but you're in my head and I can't manage to get you out," he says, leaning down and staring straight into her eyes, breathing heavily into her face, "And I can't fucking convince myself that you don't like me back, okay, so it would be best if we just didn't ever talk."

"Well that's not bloody fair, you arse, because have you ever considered that I like talking to you, you arrogant, pig-headed toe-rag!" Lily shrieks back, distinctly uncomfortable with his close stance, her red hair flying, "And I haven't gotten to talk to you for the entire year because you're moody and well, just fucking get over it Potter, because I want to talk to you and I miss you goddammit!"

He doesn't reply, but his eyes widen at her response, and Lily claps her hands over her mouth when she suddenly realizes what she has blurted out.

They stand there in silence for a couple seconds before Lily's scarlet hue calms down a bit, and she manages to reclaim her breath.

"I don't know what that was, please ignore it," she says calmly, looking down at her feet, ready to walk away, when she suddenly feels his hands wrap around her upper arms and pull her to him so that she's staring straight into his eyes, with him crouching in front of her.

"JAMES, STOP IT!"

"I am going to ask you one, simple question, and this will be the last question I will ever ask you, I will ever say to you, since after this year anyways we will never need to see each other again. It's your choice, Lily, you've finally got the power back."

"James, please," Lily says quietly, her arms hurting from his tight grip and her eyes darting around them, "Stop it, stop it. Don't say it. Stop it. Please, James, PLEASE. I don't want to answer it, don't make me."

James takes in a huge heaving breath, looking up at the sky, and then looks down at Lily again, who has her eyes closed. Nestled this close to him, he smells like nicotine and a faint scent of alcohol, combined with vanilla and a scent that she can't quite put her finger on but really likes, a sort of cinnamon.

She prays to herself in her head that he won't let go, but forces herself to open her eyes and stare into his darkened ones.

"Lily Evans, I will only ask you this one more time. We can't be friends, I can't live that way and I'm sick of your games. So here goes nothing."

He closes his eyes and inhales a deep breath, his glasses steaming up from the proximity to her lips. He's now on his knees, and is clutching to her arms like a life-raft.

"Lily Evans, will you go out with me?"

And for a horrible, horrible moment he swears that he sees her lips form into the shape of a no, and she rips herself from him and walks two steps backwards, her eyes wide and seemingly on fire. A blush is spreading up her body again, from inside the curve of her neckline through to her face, and he sees her shake imperceptibly.

"Lily, you have to answer," James says quietly, looking at the ground, still on his knees, his arms dangling, fingertips brushing the ground.

And a gasp escapes from her, when she realizes that he's serious this time, he can't take another brush-off, and she does the thing that her brain tells her to do which is to RUN RUN RUN away from this PAIN and NERVOUSNESS and FEAR.

And she sprints away from him, down the beat-up grass, until she makes it to the groundskeeper's hut, ducking behind it, her heart pounding and her body shaking, because she's scared of beautiful boys like him and the way they make her feel.

And she nearly starts hyperventilating, clasping her hands over her open mouth, her face going red as she silently screams into her hands, begging Merlin to not make her go back there and face him because she ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH and he'll USE HER and he'll humiliate her worse than she's done to him because maybe she hasn't kissed anyone yet and maybe she's still a virgin and maybe she's not but in both scenarios he could hurt her so badly.

And she just isn't good enough for him, the head of the Marauders, and they're going to FUCKING DIE IN A COUPLE YEARS because of Voldemort and he needs the PERFECT girl and she doesn't know what to do oh Lord oh Lord oh Lord.

But at the thought that he might die she freezes and unclasps her hands from her mouth and leans her forehead against the cool windowpane of the hut and she thinks Merlin I'll break him and I can't do that because I love him and

NO BUT HE'LL HURT

but she overrides her flee mechanism in her brain and forces herself to take small steps away from the hut. Then she realizes that he might have left so she starts to sprint, slowly builds up the courage to run faster and faster up towards where they were standing and he is still kneeling in the dirt looking so lost and alone that her heart nearly breaks into two so she does the one thing that she told herself that she would never do with Potter and she takes two steps towards him and says yes.

His eyes widen and his mouth drops open a bit because she knows that he is shocked and then she does something even stupider because she doesn't want to hear his smart aleck response so she walks up towards him and presses her lips to his.

And it's not perfect.

Their lips aren't in sync and it's messy and it's not at all what she imagined and he's smushing hers to his but it's alright because it's JAMES and it's everything she's imagined and they can teach each other how to breathe.

And she could swear in that moment she feels something like chalk falling off of her back, and when she removes her lips from his and glances at him, she swears that he's glowing, and alive like never before.

He gets to his feet, and she notices a golden tint that wasn't there before, and suddenly the stars aren't so metallic and the world isn't so cold and maybe she's saved two hearts today.

"Oi," he says slowly, looking down at her, "I'm glad we got that sorted out."

Then he winks at her, grabs her hand, and pulls her down the dirt path back to Hogwarts. And she huffs and gets mad at him and punches his shoulder as they start walking but even so she can't help a little wry grin cover her face.

And she lets loose an ebullient, beautiful, full-throated laugh, causing James to stop in his feet and stare at her in her radiance, under the stars and the faint moonlight.

Lily Evans is Lily Evans again, because James Potter is James Potter again.

And she wouldn't have it any other way.


End file.
